Effectiveness and Predictors of Treatment Outcome of an Intensive Eight-day Treatment Program for PTSD: A Latent Profile Analysis

DSpace/Manakin Repository

Effectiveness and Predictors of Treatment Outcome of an Intensive Eight-day Treatment Program for PTSD: A Latent Profile Analysis

Zoet, H.A.

(2017) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Theses

(Master thesis)

Abstract

Objective: In recent years, there has been growing interest in intensive treatment programs for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), since these are characterized by low drop-out rates, whereas treatment effects are presumably similar but faster than those of non-intensive treatments. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of an intensive eight-day treatment ... read more program consisting of both EMDR therapy and prolonged exposure therapy, and examined predictors of treatment effectiveness.
Methods: A total of 272 patients were included in this study. PTSD symptoms and severity were measured using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and comorbidity was measured using the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). A latent profile analysis was conducted to identify different profiles of treatment response patterns. A multinomial logistic regression was employed next to identify predictors of treatment effectiveness.
Results: Latent profile analysis revealed five distinct classes of treatment response, reflecting major improvement (31.0%), great improvement with residual hyperarousal symptoms (17.3%), moderate improvement (23.6%), slight improvement with decrease in numbing symptoms (16.7%) and no improvement (11.4%). Only dissociation showed to have some consistent predictive value for the extent to which patients profited from treatment.
Conclusions: An intensive treatment program for severe PTSD, consisting of prolonged exposure therapy and EMDR therapy, appears to be feasible and highly effective, even for those with multiple comorbidities. Dissociation emerged as a predictor of the amount of improvement, rather than predicting treatment effectiveness per se. show less

Download/Full Text

Not available. The author may have various reasons for not providing access, for instance because it is prohibited by the commissioner of the research, or because the author is conducting further research on the subject.